PolishLinux is at it again. 7000 svn revisions later PolishLinux has posted their next "visual changelog" article highlighting changes in KDE 4.1. The article highlights new features in numerous pPlasmoids, new Plasmoids, Plasma in general, Dolphin, Amarok, Kget and KWin compositing customization. From the article: "Now I can be almost sure that when a stable edition of KDE 4.1 is published, I will definitely say good [bye] to my old good KDE 3.5."

For those who are still confused: WebKit is a fork of KHTML and it isn't actually called KHTML anymore. There is occasional merging of changes, nowadays probably more WebKit->KHTML than the other way. There are simply so many people from different projects and companies working on WebKit that it has sorta kinda taken the lead.

I don't think the webkit part will be ready for KDE 4.1. There is no interest from webkit developers to do that ( at least from what I can see in the weekly digests ). So yes we need to relay on our KHTML developer. Keep it up guys.

KHTML is already very stable now and some developers are working in KHTML to add more features and squash bugs. Plus the addition that javascript bytecode interpreter for KJS is work in progress, I think Konqueror + KHTML will rock in KDE 4.1.

About webkit in KDE, I think it is still work in progress to create Webkit KPart for Konqueror, so it might be possible that someday we can change the rendering engine on-the-fly. (Although I still prefer a separate Webkit dedicated browser is created from scratch in Qt/KDE)

Merging those changes from Webkit to KHTML is always done by the developers, but merging two branches that already diverged for years is not that easy :)

Why would you want a seperate browser? Konqueror is the best browser in the world no matter rendering engine it uses; theres no need to recreate such a great product just because its backend has changed, especially since konqueror is *designed* to swap out backends.

I know I could compile it manually but I don't have time for that and I picked Kubuntu because they promised the best KDE4 dev package and support. All we get though is stable release :/ I'm stuck with kubuntu now so I can't switch to OpenSuse, please Kubuntu dev comply with your promise and bring those KDE 4.1 preview packages already!

My own experience completely jibes with the PolishLinux review. Especially in the last 2 weeks (compiling from SVN) or so it seems like a lot of things have started coming together making it a much more usable desktop. Not just new features but stability in the existing ones. Can't wait to see what stable 4.1 looks like if this is what it is 3 (4?) months in advance.

As of KDE 4.0.67, Kontact at least starts on my laptop and displays most of the tabs correctly.
I don't have net access right now so I can't test all the features, but it speaks well for inclusion in KDE 4.1.
Just tested QT4 Scribus and works well. K3B seems to start, not tested it yet.
I still lack some little things I like (Copy/move right menu entry, access to the calendar with clicking on the clock, one wallpaper per virtual desktop, adjust taskbar width, small stuff like that) but nothing showstopping.
I think KDE 4.1 will be very good.

I love the look of Bespin! I've often felt that Oxygen did look a little too much like other proprietary desktop environments (not that I'm hating on it, I still think it looks nice). But Bespin looks rather slick, with some unique style to it. I love the look of the progress bar and tabs in particular.

Well, there are some elements of Bespin which I would like to see in Oxygen like the better use of gradients but overall in direct comparison I prefer Oxygen due to Bespin sporting some questionable design decisions (e.g. tab bar which looks like button bat and doesn't make it clear that tabs are exclusive and the less functional scroll bar).

As opposite to your view, I always want a style which is more like "other proprietary desktop environment", and Oxygen does not belong to this category. Honestly, I like the glossy looks there as it looks modern and bright. I love the Oxygen style also, I just wish the team will make it closer to nuno's mockups:

You know the apple guys have one odd thing called employees, which can be directed to do stuff like this. KDE on the other hand don't. And the small amount of contributors are kind of busy with other stuff like writing code, documentation, translations or doing artwork.

Places to put such collections should not be a problem, the only thing missing are contributors doing the job. You could volunteer, just start making them videos and you'll receive instant fame in the KDE comunity.

Maybe it's in playground. I also use trunk and don't habe dashboard widgets, but I think I need the webapplet from playground. The problem is, that there is a patch that needs to be applied to webkit to get the webapplet compiled. I'm trying to build qt-copy with that patch at the moment.

I was partially successful. I can now add dashboard widgets, but when I add them to the desktop I get the following error
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This object could not be created for the following reason:
Could not open the dashboard_com.Mike.widget.ChuckNorrisFacts package required for the ChuckNorrisFacts widget.
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I compiled the whole playground/base/plasma, except the worldclock, because it fails to build.
The patch is in the webapplet directory, it's contents.diff. It adds the contentsSize() function to the webframe class.
Good luck

I can compile the web applet from playground, and am able to install widgets, but I cannot add them to the desktop.
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Could not open the dashboard_com.whatsinthehouse.widget.wikipedia package required for the Wikipedia widget.
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Running qt-4.4.1 snapshot from 20080329 with qt-copy patches applied + today's KDE trunk.

I also tried loading the provided HelloWorld test applet:
that one does load, but looks a bit flakey.

I found I needed to include KDE:/Qt44/ also to update to kde4.068 this weekend.

BTW this last snapshot looks very polished to me. I can move the taskbar to any side and can shrink it in vert and horiz. The pager applet can now be put in as many rows as you like, GHNS seems to be working fine for themes and wallpaper. In fact for the first time I would say it is on a par with kde3.5's desktop shell. The only thing I miss is a working knetworkmanger, at the moment I am forced to use nm-applet :( (give it its due though, it does work and it shows up fine in kde4 systray).

That's a very nice article and KDE 4.1 really starts looking good and usable!

One question: I tried KDE 4.0.2 (the Fedora Live CD) and one thing that made it unusable for me is that having the panel on the left side, while possible, simply isn't usable (I have a widescreen which is why I like having it there). Anyone knows what plans there are for the panel and whether that will be fixed in KDE 4.1?